j GOD'S G 
CHILDREN 

A MODERN ALLEGORY 




JAMES ALLMAN 




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Book ^/\Jl 

Copyright N° 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



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God's Children 

A 

Modern Allegory 



JAMES ALLMAN 



CHICAGO 
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
MCMIII 



f % 



THE LibRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

MAY 18 1903 

Copyright Entry 

CLASS ^ XXc No 

/ / Z IS 
COPY ti. 

II u il I " ■ ■■■ ' ■ I r _- Ji 



Copyright, 1901, by 

JAMES AIRMAN 



etc ; ; 



Pn si edition pi.b'tis'ied April 25, i$qj 



TYPOGRAPHY BY 

MARSH, AITKEN & CURTIS COMPANY 
CHICAGO 






CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. In Which I Introduce My God . 5 
II. God Sends Mercury to Investigate 

the Condition of His Children 14 

III. Mercury Begins to Investigate the 

Condition of God's Children and 
Meets with Strange Experiences 22 

IV. Mercury Continues His Inquiry 

into the Condition of God's 
Children and Meets with More 
Surprises 36 

V. Mercury in Whitechapel .... 46 

VI. What the Socialist Said . . . .63 

VII. A Political Economist Has No Soul 86 

VIII. The Wrath of God ... . 106 



God's Children 

CHAPTER I 

IN WHICH I INTRODUCE MY -GOD 

I think I wrote and spoke to you about my definition 
of God, which I would now give in answer to the 
question, What is God? God is that All, that infinite All 
of which I am conscious of being a part, and therefore 
all in me is encompassed by God, and I feel him in 
everything. — Thoughts on God: Leo Tolstoi. 

Having selected "God's Children" as 
the title of this allegory, I find myself 
urged in consequence to a very curious 
quest. I am in search of a god. I must 
have one to be a father to the children. 
My position is awkward. Probably you 
have heard of Ponce de Leon in search 
of the fountain of eternal youth, or Jason 
in search of the golden fleece, but I 
have no doubt this is the first time you 
have ever met a man in search of a god. 
There are plenty to select from, it is true, 
in fact the supply of divinities is much in 

5 



God ' s Children 



excess of the demand, and the religious 
market is simply glutted with gods. 

There is the Jehovah of Judaism, the 
Christ of Christianity, the Zeus or Jupiter 
of Greece and Rome, the Vishnu and 
Brahma of India, not to mention Apollo, 
Mars, and Venus (the young lady will 
excuse me I hope for not giving her 
precedence) and the little pantsless, grace- 
less god of love, Cupid. Besides these 
there are the thousand and one gods and 
goddesses of India, Siam, Burmah, and 
China, with their grotesque and funny 
faces, and their many heads and arms. 

I have sampled these goods, — I beg 
their pardons I mean gods, — and find 
them not to my liking. 

There is that sombre, harsh and erratic 
deity which Christianity has inherited 
from its parent creed Judaism. A 
divinity who could not make manifest 
unto men such simple and self-evident 
rules of conduct as, Thou shalt not kill, 
thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not 
commit adultery, without creating an 



In Which I Introduce My God 7 

unpleasant atmospheric disturbance and 
compelling an extremely aged Jew called 
Moses to stay for three days and three 
nights on the top of a very high mountain 
without food or protection from the 
inclemencies of the weather. A God who 
foolishly came down unto this particular 
planet called the Earth and allowed its 
denizens who are themselves but the 
creation of his will and alive by his 
sufferance, to put him to death. This 
God will not suit my purpose, I do not 
like him and will not have him. 

I next turn to the principal god of the 
religions that were accepted by civiliza- 
tion prior to Christianity — him who was 
known to the Greeks as Zeus and to the 
Latins as Jupiter, and I must say I prefer 
him to the Christian God because he was 
such a jolly good fellow. He was so like 
to erring mortals that I like him all the 
more for it. When he came on earth it 
was not to die for men; Jupiter knew too 
much for that, he came down to have 
a good time. He enjoyed himself 



God's Children 



immensely with such young ladies as 
Leda and Europa in a manner that would 
furnish a splendid theme for a modern 
farce or a realistic novel, and when he 
returned to Olympus, Juno, his wife, 
tendered him very much the same recep- 
tion as an earthly spouse would give to 
an erring husband. I turn with sorrow 
from this humane and jovial divinity 
because I cannot accept him on account 
of the shockingly low standard of his 
morals. 

Shelley in his notes to Queen Mab 
says: — "God is an hypothesis," and if God 
be merely an imagination I do not see 
why I should not be entitled to imagine 
my own god if I am too fastidious about 
my divinities to accept the crude concep- 
tions of others. I shall therefore proceed 
to imagine my own god as follows: — 

God is kind, benign and beautiful; 
urbane in manner, almighty in will, but 
merciful in disposition. Eternal, never 
born and never dying, he existed from 
ages which had no beginning; alone in 



In Which I Introditce My God g 

terrible and majestic solitude, until he 
became weary of his loneliness (I cannot 
imagine a god who has not certain human 
attributes — it is beyond man's mental 
power to do so) and in order to relieve 
himself of his fit of divine ennui he 
created certain semi-divine beings as 
attendants and companions, and put 
them in a place called heaven. These 
companions amused him for a time, but 
again he became weary and he tired of 
them and their company and it occurred 
to his divine mind that it would be very 
amusing to construct some sort of a toy 
or contrivance to please himself with and 
he made the universe. He brought into 
existence a number of ever revolving and 
moving bodies of substance, and he kept 
them in form and place and proper circuit 
by means of force or energy. This grand 
far-reaching cosmos of matter and motion 
continually counterbalancing each on the 
other, this beautiful aggregation of bril- 
liant suns with their many hued attend- 
ant planets circling around them, these 



io God's Child 



ren 



strange, gorgeous, and erratically moving 
comets all extending into the farthest 
limits of space, myriads and myriads of 
miles in length and breadth and height, is 
spoken of in awesome reverence by 
mortals as the universe. In heaven, 
though, they do not consider this universe 
so seriously. Its many revolutions and 
changes and phases amuse God and his 
angels even as the revolving of a top or 
the changing of forms and colors in a 
kaleidoscope will please a child. The 
universe is God's plaything. 

God studied and watched this universe, 
his toy, in its entirety and fullness and 
vastness. It pleased him to perceive its 
many forms and motions. He considered 
it in its details and peered into its 
smallest aspect, and laughed to see how 
many millions of minute forms of animal 
life one small drop of water could contain 
and then he became tired of his toy and 
neglected it again for a very long period. 

After a very long time had elapsed he 
suddenly thought of it again and in a 



In Which I Introduce My God 1 1 

passing whim of divine humor, for God 
appreciates humor, it occurred to him 
that it would be a very interesting experi- 
ment if he should take an infinitesimal 
fraction or atom of his mens divinior, his 
divine soul and essence, and instill it into 
the brains of certain beings on the differ- 
ent planets and thus endow them with 
reason just to find out what ridiculous 
uses they would make of it. 

He passed through the universe rapidly, 
for it does not take God long to do so, 
and he placed a very small amount of the 
mens divinior in one distinct species of 
animal inhabiting each planet. 

In due time he reached the earth and 
for a while he hesitated among the 
different living beings upon its surface, 
wondering upon which he should bestow 
his great gift of reason. He thought at 
first of the graceful gazelle, swift-footed 
and slender, careering at lightning speed 
over the boundless wilds of South Africa. 
He thought of the powerful, majestic lion 
with his tawny-crested calm-faced head 



12 God's Children 

upreared, and shoulders flowing with a 
mane of tangled locks. 

But it so happened, just as he was about 
to bestow this great gift upon some noble 
beast or beautiful bird, that God caught 
sight of a man. God laughed pityingly 
and exclaimed: 

"Poor misshapen beast, how extremely 
hideous you appear. Surely I must have 
been very careless when I made you, for 
your limbs are not of uniform length like 
those of the more graceful monkey or 
most of the other animals, and the hair 
upon your body appears only in patches, 
while in other places you are so comically 
bald; you are slow and shambling of 
movement, and I am sure you cannot run 
away from fleeter beasts of prey, and 
when caught by them you must be very 
defenseless for you have not long keen 
horns, neither have you teeth nor claws, 
therefore, poor misshapen man, to you 
will I give the gift of reason, in order 
that you may be able through the intelli- 
gence of your mind to fashion artificial 



In Which I Introduce My God 13 

clothing for that body which I have 
neglected to clothe properly, and that 
you may be able to make for yourself out 
of stone or iron sharp and heavy weapons 
to supply the place of teeth and claws, 
and in order that you may build houses 
and go into them when the night is dark 
and thus be safe from the other more 
powerful beasts. Unto you, man, do I 
give that essence divine called mind and 
adopt you from among all the beasts of 
the earth to be God's Children." 



CHAPTER II 

GOD SENDS MERCURY TO INVESTIGATE THE 
CONDITION OF HIS CHILDREN 

A station like the herald Mercury. — Hamlet: Shake- 
speare. 

After God had selected men to be his 
children, he passed away through the 
universe visiting other planets, and even- 
tually having completed his work returned 
to heaven, and from thence for a short 
time he amused himself studying his 
children on the different planets, some- 
times thinking of them on one and some- 
times on another, but he forgot or 
neglected the earth. 

After a short time God wearied of this 
diversion also and he lazily ignored the 
doings of his children, except occasionally 
when he would become casually desirous 
about them, and then having found thefts 
too uninteresting for his immediate 
divine attention he would call for his 
14 



God Sends Mercury to Investigate 1 5 

heavenly messenger and send him on to 
investigate them. The name of this 
heavenly messenger is unknown to me 
for he is semi-divine and I am merely 
mortal, but as I shall be compelled often 
to refer to him I shall call him Mercury, 
the name by which heaven's messenger 
was known to the ancients. 

God was reclining gracefully and care- 
lessly upon a couch of opalescent-colored 
clouds when he suddenly thought he 
would like to be amused and he fixed his 
eyes upon his toy, the universe. He 
thought of his children who inhabited 
many of its different planets. His eyes 
wandered over many of them and at 
length by chance rested upon the earth. 
This was merely an accident. 

God lifted his voice and he called aloud 
for the heavenly messenger, Mercury. 
He did not exclaim aloud, majestically, 
"Come thou hither, oh, my fleet and obedi- 
ent messenger!" Only the pompous over- 
bearing divinities, imagined by foolish 
mortals, talk that way. Earthly kings 



1 6 God ' s Children 



sometimes speak that way too, and 
imagine it is dignified and majestic. 
Majesty is simply the quintessence of 
ridiculous self-conceit. God is unassum- 
ing and plain in manner, simple and 
direct in talk. He simply said, "Mercury, 
come here." 

And Mercury, like all the other beings 
in heaven, did not approach in fear and 
dread as God's attendants are usually 
supposed to, he did not prostrate himself 
at God's feet and humbly implore his will, 
for God, not being of a despotic disposi- 
tion does not wish his attendants to be 
servile and cringing. Mercury simply 
walked up to God and looking him 
frankly in the face remarked in uncon- 
cerned but still respectful manner: 
"Well, God, what do you want with me?" 

God replied, "Well, Mercury, I feel I 
would like to amuse myself with the 
doings of my children. Go down to one 
of those planets" — here God's gaze 
wandered over the universe and by the 
merest chance rested upon the earth, — "go 



God Sends Mercury to Investigate 1 7 

to that far-away dim-looking planet and 
tell me when you return how my children 
are progressing." 

Mercury hurried away very happy, for 
these commissions usually meant to him 
very pleasant and happy vacations. 
Before going, however, he did what an 
earthly tourist does when he starts out 
upon a journey. The tourist usually 
gathers information about the land where 
he is going to visit and oftentimes carries 
that information with him in the form of 
a guide-book. In the same manner Mer- 
cury hurried away to seek some informa- 
tion about the place he was going to visit, 
and in order to obtain it he sought the 
office of the recording angel. 

This heavenly official is supposed to 
keep a classified record of the universe, 
its manifestations and movements, and of 
the children of God who inhabit it and 
their habits, their works, inclinations, 
governments, etc., — but he does not. 
Like many a mortal official he has turned 
his position into a sinecure, he has 



1 8 God's Children 

neglected the book of records,, and God, 
being a kindly and indulgent master, 
does not bother much about what the 
recording angel does, or rather does not. 

When Mercury entered the office of 
this official the recording angel was in a 
deep slumber. He awoke and inquired, 
yawningly, and with that disturbed and 
petulant air peculiar to all officials, when 
expected to perform the functions of 
their office, what Mercury wanted. 

Mercury replied in a good humored 
manner: "Well, my friend, I have been or- 
dered by God to investigate the condition 
of his children on the earth, and I thought 
I would come to you before I started out 
in order to get some information." 

The recording angel quickly recovered 
his equanimity — for the heavenly people 
are polite to each other — and remarked: 
"I fear, Mercury, that you are going to 
a very unpleasant place. That Earth is 
one of the most peculiar and puzzling of 
all the planets; in fact it seems to me 
there is something very wrong there." 



God Sends Mercury to Investigate 19 

This said, the recording angel began to 
search among the books of record 
exclaiming dreamily: "The earth, the 
earth, where did I leave the volume in 
which it is described. I fear it is lost. 
Oh yes, here it is!" 

He pulled down from his shelves a 
very dusty-looking volume, and twitching 
one of his wings around he cleared the 
many cobwebs off the book. 

"God's children on the earth," he said, 
"have a strange habit of congregating 
closely, and I should think unhealthily, 
together in large aggregations which 
they call cities, and I think if you are 
sent to inquire into their institutions and 
manners you had better seek the largest 
of these cities. I think it is called 
Nineveh or Babylon. No, that was some 
time ago, they have drifted farther west- 
ward now. I think," he said, turning over 
another page, "it is Rome. No, that is 
not it; I made another entry only recently, 
I think — yes — here it is, London. You 
will find this to be the largest city to-day 



20 God's Children 

on the earth. It is situated upon a 
small island called England, and you had 
better go to that city, for there you will 
find concentrated all the enterprises, 
hopes and ambitions of God's Children 
centered in one great focus, and you will 
thus be saved the trouble of much trav- 
eling and long investigation." 

"England, the country in which this 
city is situated, is a small island on the 
northeast corner of a large sheet of 
water called the Atlantic Ocean and on 
the northwest corner of a large conti- 
nent of land." 

"Very well," exclaimed Mercury, "that 
is all I wish to know," and he hurried 
away. 

The recording angel sauntered back 
into his office and resumed his slumber. 

Mercury went rapidly to the golden 
gates of heaven and passed without them. 
For one moment he poised himself and 
then spreading his wings began to pass 
through space with a rapidity that 
exceeds mortal ken. 



God Sends Mercury to Investigate 21 

Solar systems and planets rushed 
past him, and in a few seconds the 
earth became larger and nearer. Its con- 
tinents and oceans spread before him. 
He directed his course toward the point 
described and arrived in the center of 
London at Charing Cross. 



CHAPTER III 

MERCURY BEGINS TO INVESTIGATE THE CON- 
DITION OF god's CHILDREN AND MEETS 
WITH STRANGE EXPERIENCES 

If we could conceive a visitor from another planet 
coming among us and being set down in the midst of 
our western civilization at the present day there is one 
feature of our life, which we might imagine could not 
fail to excite his interest and curiosity. . . . He 
would notice at every turn in our cities great buildings — 
churches, temples, cathedrals — and he would have seen 
also that wherever men lived together in small groups 
they erected these buildings. . . . If at this stage he 
were to ask his guide for some explanation of these 
phenomena he would not improbably begin to feel some- 
what puzzled. 

— Social Evolution, Chap. IV: Benjamin Kidd. 

When Mercury arrived in Charing 
Cross, which is in the center of London, 
he hovered for a time above in spiritual 
form invisible to mortal eyes. But it 
soon occurred to him that he had better 
take tangible shape, assume mortal form, 
if he would discover anything about 

22 



Mercury Begins to Investigate 23 

God's Children, and accordingly he 
looked around him and observed the 
different people who were passing. Just 
at that moment an exquisite dandy, fresh 
from a morning call, passed by and 
Mercury resolved to assume his form, cut 
of clothing and other very necessary 
appurtenances, such as cigar, eye-glass 
and gold-headed cane. He quickly threw 
away the cigar, for the dandy who had 
been smoking the similar one did not 
have a very fastidious perception of the 
gentle flavor of the weed, he being one of 
those who smoke only for appearance 
and not from a sense of enjoyment, and 
hence his cigar had a vile flavor. The 
eye-glass Mercury rapidly dropped from 
his face for although he had assumed the 
external appearance of a dude it was 
beyond his patience and endurance to 
perform the most laborious and painful 
function of that genus. 

He walked westward from Charing 
Cross and passing through Trafalgar 
Square he admired the statues, fountains 



24 God's Children 

and buildings and he became very well 
impressed with the residences of God's 
Children and the buildings in their city. 
He looked at the people who were 
passing and remarked to himself: 

"Well, they appear to be clean and 
comfortable although their faces are not 
very intelligent and their clothing appears 
to be of very strange shape and of very 
dull colors." The tall silk hats, the 
straight black garments of the men, for 
there were few women abroad at that 
early hour on Sunday morning in Pall 
Mall, did not appear to Mercury to be 
very beautiful. 

Suddenly he saw something which 
caused him to hold his breath in astonish- 
ment. It was a lady — nay something 
more important than that, a lady's maid 
— aye it was even worse still, a spring hat 
plus a lady's maid. Mercury felt himself 
compelled to admit that if the men wore 
only dark and sombre hues the women 
made ample amends for it. That hat 
was fearfully and wonderfully made. It 



Mercury Begins to Investigate 25 

was surmounted with birds, beasts, 
flowers, ferns and ribbons, and the hues 
of this hat and those of the rest of the 
raiment of the maid combined all the 
colors of the rainbow plus many others. 
Mercury became so intensely interested 
in the polychromatically garbed damsel 
that he even violated the proprieties by 
staring rudely and blankly at her, a pro- 
ceeding which she did not seem to object 
to, indeed, she expected such treatment 
in Pall Mall. As she approached nearer, 
the heavenly messenger perceived that 
she was carrying something under her 
arm. It was a book with gilt edges. 
Mercury's curiosity overcoming him he 
boldly inquired of her: 

''What is that you are carrying?" 
She replied, "That is the Bible." 
"What is the Bible?" he again inquired. 
"It is God's word," she replied. 
"Dear me," exclaimed Mercury, "I did 
not think he ever spoke to you. And 
pray where are you going with it?" 
"To church," she replied. 



26 God 's Children 

"What is church?" 

"It is God's house." 

"Why, he does not live here," ejacu- 
lated Mercury. 

The female, who was not at all sur- 
prised at being accosted by an entire 
stranger, for it was in Pall Mall, ogled 
Mercury and appeared to court a flirta- 
tion, but Mercury, feeling too much 
astonished at what he had heard, ended 
the conversation as abruptly as he had 
begun it, much to the chagrin of the 
lady's maid. Mercury did not feel much 
inclined for a flirtation, he being too 
much puzzled at what he had heard. 
"This is truly strange," he thought, 
"God's house and God's word; I must 
follow her and find out what it is and 
where it is." With this intent, he walked 
at a respectful distance behind her 
through Pall Mall and then followed her 
into Whitehall, and as he went he noticed 
several others going in the same direc- 
tion, many of whom carried Bibles and 
prayer-books. 



Mercury Begins to Investigate 27 

But his attention was suddenly diverted 
by the most curious and untoward sights 
and sounds. He heard the blaring of 
trumpets and the beating of drums and 
he saw a large body of men all wearing 
the same red coats and carrying long 
sharp steel implements upon their shoul- 
ders. They marched along with a steady 
and rhythmic movement and looked like 
a stream of blood flowing down the 
street, while the pale white glitter of their 
bayonets appeared like a crest of foam 
upon its surface. Above them waved 
and floated a flag of gaudy hues upon 
which was designed a lion, some leopards, 
a harp, a crown and some other things. 
Mercury looked in astonishment at this 
strange sight and he turned to an old 
gentleman of upright carriage who hap- 
pened to be walking near, and who was 
a retired army officer on half pay, and 
inquired: 

"What are those and why do they wear 
the same kind of clothing? What will 
they do with those murderous-looking 



28 God 's Children 

sharp things they are carrying, and where 
are they going to ?" 

To which the retired army officer 
replied: 

"That is a regiment of the glorious 
British army, and they are going to South 
Central Africa to slaughter some of those 
beggarly Boers who have dared to rebel 
against the glorious British empire." 

"What!" exclaimed Mercury. "Slaugh- 
ter their fellow men? Why should they 
do so? Are not God's Children happy, 
contented and peaceful? Why should 
they kill each other? Why, the very 
thought is brutal and barbarous!" 

The old gentleman to whom he spoke, 
bridled up and replied: 

"Sir, you are a dangerous socialist," 
and then hurried away in high dudgeon. 

Mercury gazed wonderingly after him, 
and then remarked: 

"There must be something wrong with 
God's Children that they should kill each 
other in this manner," and he thought 
deeply about this problem as he followed 



Mercury Begins to Investigate 29 

the throng of people who were going to 
God's house. At the end of Whitehall 
he turned with the crowd in the direction 
of Westminster Abbey and was much 
surprised when he beheld its many tre- 
foiled and quaintly-carved facades and 
looked up at its delicate Gothic spires 
reaching upward toward heaven and 
losing their graceful forms in the dim 
and misty sky of London. 

"Is that God's house?" he inquired of a 
passer-by. 

"Yes it is," came back the answer. 

Mercury gazed with awe and wonder 
upon the beautiful structure and then 
remarked: 

"It is grand and beautiful. Truly it is 
worthy of being called God's house." 

He entered and he admired the lofty 
nave, the shadowy high-groined roof, and 
when he reached Henry the Seventh's 
Chapel he was pleased with that perfect 
specimen of later Gothic architecture and 
admired much the intricate and lace-like 
tracery of its wonderfully carven stone 



30 God ' s Children 

ceiling, but he passed from thence to that 
part of the Abbey where St. Edward the 
Confessor and many other English kings 
are buried, and he noticed in particular a 
tomb above which was suspended a 
tarnished helmet, a long rusty sword and 
a shield. Two youths were standing 
reverently before this tomb gazing upon 
it in deep veneration, and one whispered 
unto the other: 

"It is the tomb of Henry the Fifth, the 
hero of Agincourt." 

Mercury turned to the youth and asked 
him: 

"What noble deed did this hero per- 
form that he should be honored with 
burial in God's beautiful house?" 

The boy replied: 

"Oh, he was brave. He went to war, 
and killed many Frenchmen." 

"Do they bury butchers in the house of 
God?" sternly inquired Mercury. 

"Sir, you are a vandal," indignantly 
rejoined the boy. 

Mercury's astonishment at this curt 



Mercury Begins to Investigate 31 

answer was checked by a verger who 
approached him and informed him that 
the service of God was about to begin, 
and that he must stop walking about 
looking at the sights. 

"I wonder how God's Children serve 
him," murmured Mercury, as he walked 
toward the nave and took his seat 
among the congregation. 

He perceived a portly, florid-faced 
being, attired in feminine costume, con- 
sisting of a long black petticoat and a 
curious garment over it, which looked like 
a shirt to which were attached sleeves 
so voluminous that ten poor children 
might have found material for clean body 
linen in them, ascend the pulpit. 

The large fat man thus fantastically 
dressed like a woman, excited Mercury's 
risibility and he began to laugh, where- 
upon a pious young lady, who sat near 
him, turned toward him and eyed him 
scornfully. The action drew Mercury's 
attention to her and he noticed that her 
sleeves too were most unnecessarily large. 



32 God's Children 

Prompted by an ungovernable curiosity 
he inquired of her: 

"Why does that man dress himself like 
a woman? Why does he wear long petti- 
coats and tremendous sleeves the same as 
yours?" 

To which the pious female replied 
sourly: 

"Young man, if you do not behave 
yourself, I will call a verger and have you 
put out." 

One of those officials had noticed Mer- 
cury smiling and had seen him talk to the 
female, and approaching the heavenly 
messenger, he addressed him thus: 

"Keep quiet, sir, or I will expel you." 

Mercury remained quiet for a time, but 
something so ridiculous occurred shortly, 
that he felt himself compelled to laugh 
outright. 

The tall fat man in female garb began 
to talk aloud with a most abominable 
Oxford drawl, as follows: 

"Oh, Laud, we haughtily beseech thee 
that thou willst deign to assist os, and we 



. Mercury Begins to Investigate 33 

do ask of thee in the most haughty 
mannah," etc. 

"I wonder what he is talking so 
haughtily to God about," said Mercury. 

"How God will laugh when I tell him 
about this." 

"Oh, Laud," continued the minister, 
"who didst come down upon this earth to 
die for thy children " 

"What!" exclaimed Mercury. "God 
came down upon this earth to die for his 
children? Why, what a fantastic idea! 
Are God's Children so stupid that they 
think he would commit suicide for such a 
trivial cause?" 

The thought was so extremely ridicu- 
lous that Mercury began to laugh aloud. 
The verger approached him again and 
said to him: 

"Now, behave yourself; this is the last 
warning I will give you," and in company 
with another verger he remained standing 
threateningly near Mercury. 

Again Mercury became very quiet, and 
again he listened to the minister, but this 



34 God' s Children 

time he heard words which excited not 
his ridicule but his wrath. 

"Oh Laud," exclaimed the minister, 
"bless our army in Africa. May our 
glorious British regiments be victorious 
over those vile Boers. May they, in 
righteous anger, oh Laud, slaughter those 
rebels who have dared to resist the onward 
march of progress and civilization." 

This was more than Mercury could 
tolerate. Rising angrily, he cried in 
threatening tones: "That is an abomin- 
able blasphemy; God is kind and merci- 
ful and you insult his name when you 
invoke his assistance in perpetrating 
wholesale murder. Your foolish talk 
about his dying for you may be harmless, 
but when you seek his aid for the doing 
of bloody deeds, then" — but Mercury got 
no further with his protest, for the two 
vergers seized him by the collar of his 
coat, and that part of his clothing, which 
on account of its looseness afforded an 
ample grasp, and they then threw him 
out of the Abbey. 



Mercury Begins to Investigate 35 

Thus was God's messenger thrown out 
of God's house by God's Children because 
he objected to the blasphemy of God's 
name. 



CHAPTER IV 

MERCURY CONTINUES HIS INQUIRY INTO THE 

CONDITION OF GOD'S CHILDREN AND 

MEETS WITH MORE SURPRISES 

In any case there are two cities, hostile to one 
another — the city of the poor and the city of the rich: 
and each of these contains many cities ; and if you deal 
with them as one you will find yourself thoroughly mis- 
taken; but if you treat them as two and give to one 
class in the community the power and persons of the 
other you will have many allies and few enemies. — 
Plato's Republic, Book IV. 

A large crowd of idlers, prompted by 
curiosity, gathered around Mercury when 
he was expelled from God's house and 
gazed anxiously upon him, eagerly 
expecting him to fight with one of the 
vergers, and thus enable them to enjoy 
that prettiest of London street scenes, "a 
row." When Mercury walked away they 
were much chagrined and had to content 
themselves with answering the anxious 

questionings of other idlers who had 

36 



Mercury Continues His Inquiry 37 

arrived too late, and who were eagerly 
asking, "What's up?" 

Mercury had not proceeded far from 
the scene of the disturbance when he was 
overtaken by a politely disposed, but very 
aristocratic-looking old gentleman whose 
features were of the clean-cut Norman 
order and whose habiliments evidenced 
the height of sartorial art. In a conde- 
scending and patronizing manner he be- 
gan to bestow upon Mercury that which 
men are always willing to give gratuitously 
because it costs nothing to acquire — 
advice. Those who give the most advice 
usually need it most. 

"Sir," began the old gentleman, "I hope 
you will pardon my familiarity, but my 
intentions are gentlemanly and for your 
welfare. My dear young sir, you evi- 
dently imbibed so much champagne last 
night that you are still in a slightly after- 
dinner condition. Pray don't be offended; 
remember, I speak for your welfare. I 
perceived you this morning in Pall Mall, 
and although you are a stranger to me, I 



38 God's Children 

became convinced by your distinguished 
bearing, that you were a gentleman, and 
when I afterward saw you attempting to 
strike up a flirtation with a young lady in 
the Abbey, laughing at the minister, and 
fighting with the vergers, I became con- 
vinced that my first impression con- 
cerning you must be correct. 

"I would kindly advise you to retire to 
your chambers. I have much sympathy 
with a young gentleman sowing his wild 
oats, for I am reaping mine now, and my 
advice is tendered to you out of a gentle- 
manly regard for your good." 

He continued much further in a similar 
strain, and Mercury, although not quite 
comprehending what he meant, tolerated 
him because the heavenly beings are nat- 
urally polite, and the advice, although 
slightly blase and wearisome, was offered 
with a good intention. 

Suddenly, however, the old aristocrat's 
admonitions were rudely interrupted by 
the appearance of a man of extremely 
unprepossessing exterior. With a pallid 



Mercttry Continues His Inqtiiry 39 

and hunger-marked face, attired in 
squallid and tattered garb, a beggar 
approached them. Extending a toil-worn 
knotty hand, he beseeched alms in plead- 
ing tones, telling meanwhile of hunger 
and cold and suffering. Prompted by 
that most heavenly instinct, mercy, Mer- 
cury bestowed upon the suppliant a small 
sum of money, but was much surprised to 
hear the old gentleman, who had been 
talking in such kind and paternal tones, 
refuse in a harsh and brutal manner. 

Turning to him, Mercury asked in sur- 
prise: 

"Why is that man so miserable and 
destitute while so many are comfortable, 
well-clad and well-fed, and why, my 
friend, do you refuse to relieve his urgent 
needs in such harsh and brutal manner?" 

"Because he is a vagabond, a loafer, 
who is too lazy to work, and I do 
not believe in encouraging pauperism," 
replied the gentleman. 

"Had I known that I would not have 
encouraged him neither," remarked Mer- 



40 God's Children 

cury, "for in a clean comfortable land 
like this there can be no excuse for such 
abject want, and I consider the condition 
of that man a fitting punishment for his 
idleness. These palatial buildings could 
not be raised without labor; your clothing 
could not be made without labor; the 
food which has made you so sleek and 
healthy could not be provided and pre- 
pared without labor, and such people 
as that idle and dirty man (I hope they 
are not numerous, in fact, I am sure they 
are not, for this is the first I have seen) 
should not be encouraged in their filthy 
indolence by the nice clean members of 
the community, who do work, such for 
instance as yourself." 

"Sir," hastily queried the aristocrat, "do 
I understand you to insinuate that you 
take me for a workingman? Are my 
manners, sir, suggestive of the toiling, 
sweating multitude?" 

"What!" exclaimed Mercury, "don't you 
work?" 

"Of course I do not," replied the other. 



Mercury Continues His Inquiry 41 

"I am a gentleman — it is beneath my 
dignity to do so." 

"Then, if you do not work, and he does 
not work," asked Mercury, pointing in the 
direction of the beggar, "how comes it 
that you are a gentleman and he is a 
loafer? How is it that you are fat, well- 
dressed and happy, and he is lean, ragged 
and miserable? Why do you speak con- 
temptuously of work and then blame the 
man because he will not do that which 
you despise?" 

Furiously the old aristocrat replied: 
"Sir, your clothing and manners led me to 
mistake you for a gentleman, but I now 
see my error. You are a leveller, a revo- 
lutionist, sir, and I now believe your object 
in Pall Mall was not a lawful one. By Jove, 
how hard it is to distinguish between a 
gentleman and a commoner these days." 
Thus rapidly speaking, he hurried away, 
purple in the face with anger. 

Mercury looked thoughtfully in the 
direction of the retreating gentleman and 
remarked: 



42 God 's Children 

"These children of God are really a 
problem. Idleness is a curse and is 
despised in one set of men; it is a 
blessing and is rewarded with honors and 
riches in another. This is the first 
problem which I do not understand. The 
next one is, if none of these people work, 
who builds all the palaces and mansions 
and who keeps them and the roadway 
in repair ? These are rather puzzling 
questions, and then the astonishing 
absurdity of that ridiculous proceeding 
which they call the service of God and 
their willful and reckless slaughter of 
other people which they term war and 
which they appear to glory in. These 
subjects I must find out about." Lowly 
he bent his head and began to ponder on 
these strange questions. He retraced his 
steps the same way as he had come, fol- 
lowing the custom of wanderers in 
strange places who usually go back the 
same way as they come. Passing back up 
Whitehall he reached Trafalgar Square 
and then instead of going westward, as in 



Mercury Continues His Inquiry 43 

the morning, he turned east and entered 
the Strand. Still wrapped in thought he 
wandered on. Once when passing Temple 
Bar, that spot rendered sacred by so many 
classic memories, haunted by the shades of 
Shakespeare, Jonson, Dryden, Goldmith, 
Johnson and Boswell, he lifted his head 
and noticed as he entered Fleet Street 
that the people were garbed in plainer, 
more careless, and in a few instances 
rather shabby, attire, and he remarked: 

"Ah! they do not appear to be as well 
clothed here," but he added, critically 
examining a few faces of those that 
passed, "they appear to be more thought- 
ful and intellectual." 

Mercury was passing through Fleet 
Street, and the people he remarked were 
journalists, some of them hack writers 
who certainly would be intelligent if they 
had time to be so — but they have not. 

Still he proceeded eastward when sud- 
denly the noise of traffic seemed to cease. 
Mercury had entered into a city of empty 
buildings and depopulated streets where 



44 God' s Children 

everything seemed to be so dreadfully 
and ominously still that the abomination 
of desolation seemed to be upon the 
place. He found himself surrounded by 
an oppressive stillness and silence. High 
majestic buildings, palatial in their 
aspects and proportions, rose in grim and 
sombre majesty on either side, but there 
were no curtains in their windows, and 
these windows were inscribed with many 
names. No smoke arose from their chim- 
neys and although these houses were so 
large and impressive, it appeared as 
though they were all deserted. It was 
not only so with a few, but every street 
appeared to be full of such houses, silent, 
still and empty. 

"What can this mean?" mused Mercury. 
"Here is a deserted city. Here "are large 
palaces apparently entirely empty. Are 
God's Children so foolish that they build 
houses and do not live in them?" And 
he looked around in vain to find a mortal 
from whom to inquire the cause of this 
remarkable phenomenon. 



Mercury Continues His Inquiry 45 

A watchman, whose unpleasant and 
monotonous duty it was to take care of 
some building nearby, at length appeared, 
and Mercury thus addressed him: 

"My friend, what are all these buildings, 
and why are they all so dreary, void and 
uninhabited?" 

To which the watchman replied: 

"These are banks, insurance offices and 
other large commercial establishments, 
and this is called the city, that part of Lon- 
don which is devoted to business and com- 
merce. Nobody lives here and although 
many are to be found here on workdays, 
this place is deserted on Sundays." 

"And why is it deserted on Sunday?" 
asked Mercury. 

"Because," replied the watchman, "on 
this day in the week they serve God; on 
the other six Mammon." 

"Oh, then," remarked Mercury, "they 
have two gods whom they serve?" 

"Yes," replied the watchman, who like 
many of his occupation was something of 
a cynic, "and they do so very effectually." 



CHAPTER V 

MERCURY IN WHITECHAPEL 

O, Dii immortales! Ubinam gentium sumus? Quam 
rem publicam habemus? In qua urbe vivimus? 

Cicero. 

Each strove by hearty blows and knocks 
To prove his theory orthodox. 

— Butler's Hudibras. 

Musing deeply about the strange habits 
of God's Children, Mercury proceeded on 
his way eastward through St. Paul's 
Churchyard, Cheapside, Poultry, Cornhill 
and Leadenhall Street, still surrounded 
by tall stately buildings, and the chilly 
silence of streets and structures made 
him meditate more deeply. 

With head bent down and hands 
joined behind his back he walked along 
mechanically, thinking earnestly and pro- 
foundly over these problems. While thus 
abstracted he passed from Leadenhall 

Street through Aldgate into a noisy, foul- 

4 6 



Mercury in Whitechapel 47 

smelling, busy thoroughfare; but he was 
so preoccupied that he heard not the din 
and saw not the motley throng of people. 
Suddenly he was rudely awakened from 
his ponderings by somebody jostling 
against him. Mercury looked up and 
shuddered, for a drunken woman had 
staggered against him. This degraded 
creature, who carried a sickly-looking 
infant in her arms, was so repulsively 
intoxicated that she reeled. Her face 
was bloated and bestial, her clothing 
soiled, tattered and awry, and she turned 
toward Mercury and uttered such a 
revolting flood of vulgarities and obscen- 
ities that even the passers-by, accustomed 
as they were to such parlance, stopped in 
surprise. Mercury stood looking at her 
in astonishment and disgust until a large 
crowd had assembled. He gazed into her 
debauched face and upon her bedraggled 
clothing and then upon those who pressed 
around him, and in deep astonishment he 
exclaimed: "Are these God's Children? 
Why, that cannot be!" And then he 



48 God ' s Children 

quickly jostled his way out of the crowd. 
Proceeding along the street he noticed 
that all whom he met were attired in the 
same garb, some of them ragged and 
some in tawdry, cheap clothing, which 
was at best but a ridiculous imitation, a 
tawdry caricature of the fine clothing 
worn by those whom he had seen at the 
West End. 

He looked up at the buildings, and 
instead of the palatial residences and 
clubs or grand gloomy bank buildings 
which he had seen in other parts of the 
city, he was astonished to perceive 
unstable, tottering, antique structures, 
some of them centuries old, each story of 
which leaned over the other toward the 
street as though looking down to see 
where it would fall, sooner or later, while 
some others leaned against each other, in 
a dangerously oblique manner, as if they 
were as intoxicated as many of their 
occupants were. 

The gin palaces were filled to over- 
flowing with ribald, vulgar, drunken 



Mercury in Whitechapel 49 

crowds, and from the open doors of these 
showy dens of iniquity issued forth 
snatches of coarse music, hall ditties, 
blent with hoarse, hilarious laughter, 
filthy jokes, brutal jeers, savage quarrel- 
ings and thick, foul-smelling tobacco 
smoke. 

A girl, young in years, but old in vice, 
whose form was still that of a child, but 
whose face, with its bold eyes, painted 
cheeks and thick sensual mouth pro- 
claimed a soul long steeped in filth, and 
whose ragged clothing was rendered 
repulsive by bright cheap ribbons and 
sham jewelry, approached Mercury and, 
leering at him, whispered something. 

The messenger from heaven, where all 
are pure, turned away pale and shud- 
dering. 

"Can this be the earth? Are these 
God's Children?" exclaimed Mercury. "It 
may be that while in my recent abstrac- 
tion I left the earth and passed to some 
strange repulsive place that God knows 
not of. Where are those beautiful, well- 



50 God's Children 

dressed people, those fine buildings that I 
saw but recently? Here everything is so 
different. I must inquire." 

He looked about for some one to speak 
to, but was afraid to address the vile 
wretches who thronged the street. At 
length he saw a man who appeared to be 
cleaner and stouter than the others and 
who wore a blue costume with brass 
buttons on it and who carried suspended 
at his side a baton. Mercury resolved to 
ask him, not because he looked more 
intelligent than the common people, but 
because he appeared as if he were an 
animated sign-post, a living street direc- 
tory. This man was really of that char- 
acter, for he belonged to that body of 
men who incidentally and accidentally 
sometimes arrest a petty and inexperi- 
enced criminal, but who are occupied 
principally in answering questions con- 
cerning the way about town, and who, 
apart from this, seldom do aught else 
save lifting glasses of beer to their lips or 
a club to break the head of a striker — he 



Mercury in Whitechapel 51 

was a policeman. Approaching him Mer- 
cury inquired: 

"My friend, is this the earth, and if it 
is not, where am I?" 

The limb of the law gazed disdainfully 
upon his questioner, and scornfully ejacu- 
lated: 

"Get out yer bloomin' toff, d'ye want 
ter make a monkey out o' me?" 

To which Mercury replied: 

"Well, my friend, you tell me to get 
out, and I assure you I certainly would 
like to do so, for I do not like my sur- 
roundings, and as to making a monkey of 
you, the power to do so belongs to God 
alone. I certainly would make that 
necessary improvement in you if it lay in 
my power. However, I beg of you to tell 
me where I am, for I am a stranger in a 
very strange land." 

The policeman looked in sullen surprise 
at Mercury and laconically replied: 

"You are in High Street, Whitechapel." 

Mercury thanked him and continued 
on his way down the unwholesome and 



52 God } s Children 

noisy street. He saw the barefoot beggar, 
the haggard-faced workingman, the 
shabbily-attired woman, the pallid little 
children and he wondered, pitied and 
sympathized at and with all. 

Suddenly he heard again the stirring 
sound of martial music which he had 
before heard in Whitehall, the beating of 
drum, the blaring of trumpets, accom- 
panied by the measured tread of many 
marching feet. He saw the red-coated 
soldiers passing along with mechanical 
regularity and stern symmetry. The 
crowd gazed sullenly and darkly upon 
the troops as they passed, and Mercury, 
who happened at the time to be standing 
near a cadaverous-faced workingman, 
remarked to him in order to find out 
something further about the barbarous 
custom of war: 

"So that is a part of the glorious British 
army marching off to Africa to maintain 
the glory of the British Empire?" 

But the workman turned upon him with 
a scowl and fiercely rejoined: 



Mercury in Whitechapel 53 

"You talk to me about the glory of the 
British Empire. Glory, indeed! They 
say the sun never sets upon it but that 
same sun rises every morning upon my 
misery, for I am unemployed and desti- 
tute, and to-morrow it will rise upon 
sorrow for my only son, the one hope of 
my life, the solace of my age, marches to 
the war with that regiment. Get from 
me, you damned patriotic liar, or I will 
take you by the throat." And he supple- 
mented his remarks with such a threaten- 
ing gesture that Mercury hurried away, 
wondering why God's Children differed so 
in their views. He passed down High 
Street and through Whitechapel Road, 
which is a continuation of it, until he 
reached Mile End Waste. The latter 
street, which is situated at the eastern 
extremity of Whitechapel, is so extremely 
wide that it provides ample space for open- 
air meetings, several of which are held 
there every Sunday. When Mercury 
arrived thither and perceived these meet- 
ings he became much interested. 



54 God's Children 

His attention was first attracted by a 
strange aggregation of fantastically- 
dressed folk, the men wearing red guern- 
seys and the women huge coal-scoop 
bonnets. They were kicking, dancing, 
screaming and praying, several banged 
tambourines most discordantly, while one 
huge fellow belabored a bass drum. All 
at once they all ceased their uproar and 
one stepped into the center of the circle 
which they formed, and by means of his 
very powerful jaws began to make a 
louder and harsher noise than all the 
others put together plus drum and tam- 
bourines had made before. This shock- 
ingly stentorious dissonance was presumed 
to be a sermon and it ran as follows: 

"The cause of all the misery which 
exists is the sin of man. It is the punish- 
ment of the Almighty upon his children 
and cannot be avoided. Submit in 
patience and fortitude to your toils and 
wants and shames here below, and God 
will give you rest and wealth and glory in 
heaven. Envy not the rich, condemn not 



Mercury in Whitechapel 55 

the powerful even though they oppress 
you. Leave them to the justice of God 
if they are wrong. Simply set your eyes 
and minds upon the heavenly hereafter; 
no matter what befalls you here, an 
eternal salvation will be yours. To cavil, 
to question and to struggle is in vain for 
God wills that these things should be and 
weak men cannot alter and should not 
question the inscrutable manifestations of 
God's divine will and providence. 

Mercury turned from him with a look 
of disgust and remarked: 

"It is well for you that God does not 
hear you, for if he heard you blame him 
for this widespread misery which appears 
to be the result of ignorance among men, 
and telling these poor people to tolerate 
their suffering in expectation of a reward 
which will never be realized, he would 
make short work of you." 

One of the strangely dressed girls who 
belonged to the curious assemblage and 
who wore a huge bonnet upon which was 
inscribed the name "Salvation Army," 



56 God ' s Children 

observing the serious aspect of Mercury, 
approached him and asked: 

"Young man, do you belong to God?" 
Mercury, surprised, replied: 
"Yes, I do. But why do you ask?" 
"Because," replied the girl, "we are 
fighting the battle of God." 

"Fighting for God!" ejaculated Mer- 
cury, in astonishment. "Allow me to tell 
you in behalf of a powerful God who 
does not need your services, that you had 
better fight for man." 

Mercury then proceeded on his way. 
He had not gone far when he per- 
ceived another meeting. This assem- 
blage appeared to be more quiet and 
orderly than the other, and many plainly 
garbed people of both sexes were listen- 
ing to a discourse on temperance deliv- 
ered by a gentleman whose pale, sickly 
countenance was rudely contrasted with 
a very rubicund nasal organ. In fact it 
appeared as if the whole of the orator's 
complexion was concentrated in his nose. 
Mercury overheard one old lady in the 



Mercury in Whitcchapel 57 

audience telling another that the color of 
the dear gentleman's nose was due to indi- 
gestion and when the dear gentleman 
extracted a flask from his pocket the old 
lady remarked that it contained medicine 
for indigestion, but Mercury, who had by 
this time approached very close to the 
speaker, noticed an extremely pungent 
odor exhaling from the flask. The tee- 
totaler spoke as follows: 

"This question is not one that can be 
called entirely a matter concerning God; 
it is not merely a religious, it is a social 
and political question, for it also concerns 
men and governments as well. If men 
and governments would only exert them- 
selves in the proper way they could erad- 
icate much of the want and vice which 
prevails in society. Drunkenness is the 
cause of poverty and all vices and crime 
originate from the same cause. Temper- 
ance and thrift are all that is necessary 
to make men happy, contented and pros- 
perous." The speaker then drew such a 
vivid word picture of the degradation 



58 God 's Children 

and suffering which are the results of 
drink and proved by statistics how much 
wealth was squandered in intoxication, 
that Mercury became of the opinion that 
the orator was right. 

"This man," he thought, "at least is 
right in that he is not expecting heaven 
to do anything for humanity, but is trying 
to urge God's Children to do something 
for themselves." 

He then walked away and peered into 
several of the rum-shops, and when he 
saw the vile, degraded throngs within, he 
exclaimed: 

"Yes, that speaker was right, here is 
the cause." Mercury walked a little 
farther until he came to another meeting 
which was peculiar in this respect — there 
was no speaker. A vacant platform 
stood in the center and around it 
gathered in many groups were earnest 
looking men discussing the evils of 
society and the remedy thereof, and Mer- 
cury was much puzzled at their intense 
aggressiveness and peculiar terminology. 



Mercury in Whitechapel 59 

He heard such expressions as "land value," 
"intrinsic value," "labor value," and 
"exchange value"; "ground rent," "eco- 
nomic rent," and "no rent"; "proletariat," 
"production," "distribution," "commodi- 
ties," and "supply and demand" ; "exploit," 
"capitalist system," etc., and he began to 
wonder who these strange earnest work- 
ingmen were who appeared to have a 
phraseology entirely sui generis. He 
turned to a workingman who stood wait- 
ing near him and asked: 

"By whom is this meeting called?" 
"Can't you see by the mere fact that 
the speaker has not arrived yet that it is 
a socialist meeting?" replied the other, 
j Mercury approached one of the groups 
of debaters and heard a man/who did not 
believe in government and who was 
trying to explain a very incomprehensible 
condition of society under which all 
would cooperate together for the pro- 
duction and distribution of wealth with- 
out any government or regulation by 
superintendents of the common efforts of 



60 God's Children 

the community. This man loudly pro- 
tested a passionate attachment to and 
love for humanity while at the same time 
he expressed a bitter hatred for all forms 
of government. 

Thereupon another in the group began 
to disagree with the hater of govern- 
ments. This second man began by saying 
that he agreed with the former in his 
detestations of government, but thought 
the best way to bring about an ideal con- 
dition of absolute liberty would be by 
imposing a single tax on land values. 
This gentleman went on to explain that 
the value of land at the present was 
largely due to monopoly and that the 
single tax would, by abolishing monopoly, 
make land much cheaper and thus give 
freedom to all. 

The first speaker here interjected that 
he could not see how one could object to 
governmental control and at the same 
time be anxious to make the government 
the sole landlord. 

He further inquired, If the value of 



Mercury in Whitechapel 61 

land arises from monopoly and the single 
tax would abolish monopoly, what would 
the single taxers have left to tax? 

Thereupon his opponent said unpleas- 
ant things in a forcible strain which were 
promptly replied to in a similar strain 
by the first speaker. Eventually both 
speakers rushed at each other and 
embraced, and Mercury having heard 
them express such love for humanity, 
thought it a friendly embrace, but was 
rudely astonished to see each uncurl his 
right arm from the other's neck and 
punch most vigorously. Both yelling, 
biting, kicking and punching most vigor- 
ously, reeled to and fro with their arms 
around each other with a movement that 
resembled clumsy waltzing, until having 
reached the curbstone both tumbled into 
the gutter. 

"Why do they act in that brutal 
manner? Why do they profess to love 
humanity so much, yet love each other so 
little? Who are they and what are they?" 
asked Mercury. 



62 God' s Children 

"Oh, they are only an anarchist and a 
single-taxer settling an argument in their 
usual manner," replied a bystander. 
Mercury was about to go away when a 
sudden movement in the crowd attracted 
his attention. The speaker had at length 
arrived. 



CHAPTER VI 

WHAT THE SOCIALIST SAID 

This need not be ; ye might arise and will 
That gold should lose its power, and thrones their glory ; 
That love, which none may bind, be free to fill 
The world like light, and evil faith grown hoary 
With crime be quenched and die. Yon promontory 
Even now eclipses the descending moon: — 
Dungeons and palaces are transitory — 
High temples fade like vapor — Man alone 
Remains whose will has power when all beside are gone. 
— Revolt of Islam, Canto VII: 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 

The chairman called the meeting to 
order in the name of the Social Demo- 
cratic Federation, and after a few hesi- 
tating remarks introduced the speaker of 
the day. The speaker was pale-faced 
and carelessly dressed and there was 
something earnest, yet cynical, about his 
keen intellectual features almost Vol- 
tairian in their sharpness which impressed 
Mercury who listened carefully to the 
following address: 

63 



64 God's Children 

"Mr. Chairman and Friends: — There 
are people who tell us that all the want 
and misery which we see around us is 
sent by heaven, inflicted by God upon 
his children in order to test their forti- 
tude and prepare them by trials and 
sufferings here below for a brighter life 
in the hereafter. These people blaspheme 
the name of the God in whom they pro- 
fess to believe when they make him 
particeps criminis in the brutality and 
ignorance of man. And then after having 
given their God such an extremely bad 
reputation they ask us to tolerate our 
wrongs here below and trust in him. 

"It is often said that God helps those 
who help themselves, and I may add 
that he trusts those who trust in them- 
selves. They who would be free them- 
selves must strike the blow. Men have 
often fought for God, but God has never 
fought for man and never will. 

"There is another set of reformers who 
tell us that drunkenness and improvi- 
dence are the causes of want and misery, 



What the Socialist Said 65 

and that if we would become temperate 
and thrifty the condition of the working 
class would be much improved. These 
people mistake a cause for an effect. 
Drunkenness is not the cause of poverty; 
it is simply one of the effects thereof. 
Poverty is the cause of drunkenness and 
for all other evils and crimes. Given 
better conditions and you w T ill have a 
better creature, but as long as the condi- 
tions that surround the worker are the 
grime and dirt of the factory during the 
day and the squalor and meanness of a 
proletarian's few rooms at night, so long 
will you have men compelled by disgust 
with their surroundings to seek oblivion 
in intoxication and comfort and convivi- 
ality in the gilded gin palace — the poor 
man's parlor. 

"As far as thrift is concerned, I think it 
a mockery to tell those who have nothing 
in the present that they should save 
something for the future, or to tell those 
who are receiving a bare subsistance 
wage that they should, by laying aside a 



66 God's Children 

few pennies per week, save enough in ten 
or twenty years to purchase a country 
seat similar to that of the Duke of West- 
minster or of Waldorf Astor. The people 
who preach thrift to unemployed or 
underpaid workers," are ignorant of ele- 
mentary arithmetic. 

"Neither the deity nor drunkenness, 
neither the providence of heaven nor the 
improvident man are the causes of the 
evils which afflict human society. There 
is one sole and only cause and that is the 
private ownership or monopoly by a few, 
of those essentials which are necessary 
for the welfare of the many, viz.: land 
and capital. There is but one cure and 
that is the public ownership and manipu- 
lation of capital and land. Monopoly is 
the evil; socialism is the cure. Private 
ownership is the one great wrong; public 
ownership and control is the one great 
remedy. 

"Land, the first of these essentials, is at 
present monopolized by the few and 
debarred to the many, unless they, the 



What the Socialist Said 67 

many, pay tribute in the form of rent. 
Land is undoubtedly nature's free gift to 
humanity collectively, not a present 
made to a few landlords, and hence we 
socialists claim that land, the passive 
factor, should be nationalized, i.e., should 
belong to the many, not to the few. 
There are many reasons in favor of this 
proposition and the first is that without 
land we cannot live or even exist, for 
everything we eat, wear and use comes 
originally from the land. The national 
ownership of the land, then, is the first 
of our demands. 

"Next we believe that labor being the 
active force or potency which when exer- 
cised upon land creates all wealth, should 
be employed by national governments 
alone. Labor is the skill of the mind, the 
strength in the muscles and bodies of 
strong, rough laborers and the mixture of 
strength and skill in the mechanic. This 
labor cannot be utilized unless it is 
applied to land or raw material and these 
being monopolized, the laborer is com- 



68 God 's Children 

pelled to go to the monopolists and work 
for them at their terms and when they 
want him to. When these monopolists of 
the passive factor, land, do not allow the 
workmen to exercise the active factor, 
labor, upon the land and its products, 
then the laborer does not receive wages 
and he starves. Hence in order to 
prevent the prospects of starvation 
among those willing to perform such a 
function as labor, we socialists believe 
that all able to work should be employed 
by a government which should be elected 
by the suffrages of all, and that the 
workers should not be dependent upon 
the whim or avarice of a few as they are 
at present. 

"But even should the workers be given 
access to the land and the raw material, 
they even then would need something 
more in this age of invention and mechan- 
ical ingenuity. The worker needs not only 
the things to work on, but the things to 
work with, not merely land and raw 
materials but tools. Furthermore, the 



What the Socialist Said 69 

tools he would need would not merely be 
the crude implements used by his ances- 
tors, but the complicated tools, the vast 
and expensive machinery, of modern 
times. These tools, these machines, fac- 
tories and railroads are capital, the 
auxiliary factor so necessary to assist 
labor in conjunction with land and raw 
material to create the wealth of the com- 
munity. These factories, railroads and 
these machines are at present monopo- 
lized by capitalists, as they are called. 

"We have reached the point where we 
perceive that there are three factors 
which are necessary for the production 
and distribution of all wealth, and these 
three factors are land, labor and capital. 
Land is called by socialists the passive 
factor, because it must be worked upon 
before wealth can be produced; labor, 
the active factor, because it acts upon or 
fructifies the earth, and capital is defined 
as the auxiliary factor because it helps 
labor to produce wealth from the earth 
and its products. 



jo God's Children 

"Now, my good friends, we socialists 
simply claim that capital should be taken 
by the people from the capitalists and 
should be owned and used by the govern- 
ment in the interest of all the people. 
When we make a demand so daring and 
revolutionary in its nature, we are com- 
pelled of course to prove its equity. I pro- 
pose, as a socialist, to deal with this ques- 
tion of capital both from an economical 
and ethical point of view and to prove from 
both these standpoints that capital should 
not belong to the capitalists as it does at 
present, but that it should be owned by 
the government in behalf of all. Let us 
consider it in its economic aspect first 
and inquire: 'What is capital?' 

"David Ricardo tells us that 'Capital is 
that part of wealth which is used to pro- 
duce more wealth.' The same author 
defines wealth as 'All articles of use or 
luxury which are produced by useful hu- 
man labor.' Now, if wealth consists of 
articles produced by useful human labor, 
and if capital is but a part of wealth, does 



What the Socialist Said 71 

it not logically follow that the laborers who 
produced the whole must have produced 
the part capital. How, then, is it that 
you, the laboring class who perform this 
useful labor, own and control no capital? 
Let us, however, go into this matter in a 
more elaborate manner. Let us take up 
the questions of wealth, capital and labor 
and, by inquiring into the nature and ex- 
plaining the functions of each prove that 
the capitalist has no right to the capital 
which he owns. 

''First, labor has already been defined 
as strength and skill usefully applied. 
Karl Marx, in Capital, Part III, Chapter 
VII, thus describes labor: 'Labor is, in 
the first place, a process in which both 
man and nature participate, and in which 
man of his own accord, starts, regu- 
lates and controls the material reactions 
between himself and nature. He opposes 
himself to nature as one of her own 
forces setting in motion arms and legs, 
head and hands, the natural forces of his 
body in order to appropriate nature's 



72 God 's Children 

productions in a form adapted to his own 
wants." It is only by the exercise of 
labor that wealth can be created. In his 
Wealth of Nations, Chapter V, Adam 
Smith says: 'Useful human labor applied 
to land and raw material creates all 
wealth and makes all value.' 

"Now, there is a period in the life of a 
thing, a form of its matter, when it is not 
wealth or an object of use or luxury, and 
that is before labor has been applied to it 
to cause its value. 

"Let us take an object of wealth, a 
commodity which has some value and by 
inquiring into the genesis of its value 
make plain the proposition that labor 
creates all wealth. Let us take this plat- 
form upon which I am standing. It is 
now an article of use; it has value, there- 
fore it is so much wealth. Now, let us 
trace it from its useless beginning to its 
useful finish. There was a time when the 
wood which forms this platform was the 
trunk of a tree, and that tree, probably 
grew in the dark recesses of some dense 



What the Socialist Said 73 

forest. While the wood formed part of 
that tree it was not wealth because it had 
no value. It had no exchange value 
because nobody would or could exchange 
a useful thing like a coat for a useless, 
unknown thing like a tree which nobody- 
had ever seen or knew of. While this 
wood formed part of the tree, it could not 
be used for a platform and hence it had 
no use value, and before work had been 
extended upon it, it could have no labor 
value. 

"A lumberman entered the forest one 
day, and by the use of an axe, guided by 
his strength, he lowered the tree. The 
moment he did so the tree began to have 
value; it became worth something simply 
because labor had been applied to and 
exercised upon it. Other laborers lopped 
off the branches and again its value was 
increased further, for the tree became of 
greater value as a branchless trunk than 
it was in its previous form, and this 
increase of value was simply due to the 
fact that more labor had been expended 



74 God's Children 

upon it. So far we see that labor applied 
to a product of the land has created 
wealth. Now let us continue. 

"Another kind of labor was then used 
upon the tree and this kind of labor was 
not productive labor, or labor which 
alters the form of natural raw material, 
making it to be artificial raw material, 
but it was distributive labor, or labor 
which increases the worth of an object by 
distributing, carrying or conveying it 
from a place at which it is of no value, or 
of small value, to another place at which 
it is desired and where it becomes of 
value, or of greater value. The trunk 
was conveyed by the labor of railroaders 
on a flat car; the brakesmen put on and 
off the brakes; the conductors superin- 
tended the condition and direction of the 
cars and the engineer, assisted by his 
fireman, directed and controlled the loco- 
motive, and as a result of their distribu- 
tive labor the tree was eventually brought 
to some saw-mills where other productive 
labor, that of the sawyers, increased its 



What the Socialist Said 75 

value by putting more labor into it, by 
sawing it up into planks. Again the labor 
of turners, varnishers, polishers and car- 
penters was applied to the planks and 
eventually you had this article of use, 
this object of wealth — a platform. It is 
simply so much natural raw material 
upon which the strength, skill and inge- 
nuity of lumbermen, teamsters, rail- 
roaders, sawyers, joiners, carpenters, 
turners and polishers has been exerted, 
and as a result you have an article of use. 
Now, apply the same reasoning to any 
object of use or luxury you see around 
you or that you use or wear — to your 
clothes, to your tobacco, to your shoes or 
to those houses yonder — in fact, to every 
artificial thing you can see. All, all, is 
the product of useful human labor. 

"Yes, so far so good, you may be think- 
ing; but something else entered into the 
formation of this wealth: What about 
your third factor, capital? Could the 
sawyer work without the saw-mill, the 
railroader distribute without the railroad, 



76 God's Children 

and are not saw-mills and railroads cap- 
ital, and therefore is not the capitalist 
who owns this capital entitled to some 
return for allowing the laborer the use of 
it in order to create value and produce 
wealth? Stop there, my friend. The 
mere ownership in the first place does 
not mean right to possession, for the 
thief owns the watch he has stolen, but 
nobody will claim that he has a right to 
it. The only ethical rights to ownership 
are production and use. Now, did the 
capitalist produce or make the capital 
which he owns or does he use it? Right 
here let me make two other definitions. 

"Henry Fawcett, in his Manual of Polit- 
ical Economy, Book I, Chapter II, stated 
that: 'Capital represents all that has 
been set aside from the results of past 
labor to assist present or future produc- 
tion.' 

"David Ricardo, in his Principles of 
Political Economy, Chapter V, defines 
capital thus: 'Capital is that part of the 
wealth of a country which is employed in 



What the Socialist Said Jj 

production, and consists of food, clothing, 
tools, raw materials, machinery, etc., 
necessary to give effect to labor.' Now, 
we have just seen how wealth, i.e., all 
articles of use or luxury, is made. Any 
article of use or luxury which is being 
consumed is wealth, according to political 
economists, but if it is not being used or 
consumed, but is applied to making more, 
then it is classed as capital. The clothing 
you are wearing out, that is, consuming, 
is wealth, but if instead of consuming but 
one suit, you had some thousands of suits 
for sale in a store, then those suits would 
be your capital, because you would be 
using them to make more wealth in the 
form of profits upon them. If capital 
then is simply a portion of wealth used to 
create more wealth, does it not logically 
follow that the portion, capital, must have 
been produced by those who made the 
whole, wealth, by the labor of the 
workers and that it cannot have been 
produced by the capitalists who never 
produce anything but an infernal disturb- 



yS God's Children 

ance on the stock exchange? But capital, 
as capital alone, cannot produce anything. 
Labor must be applied in conjunction 
with it, or in plain words labor must use 
capital in order to create more wealth. 
Therefore, as labor makes and uses cap- 
ital, to the makers and the users should 
belong the more wealth which is the 
result, and not to a non-making, non- 
using class who do nothing but control. 
Permit me, however, to elaborate this 
argument in order to make it plain, and 
point out to you not merely what capital 
is, but also what it is not. Money is not 
capital; it is a mere means of exchange, 
a measure of value. Stocks and shares 
in large commercial concerns are not 
capital, although often taken for it. 
Money, stocks and shares are the mere 
means of controlling capital, not capital 
itself; they are to capital what title deeds 
and leases are to land, and as you cannot 
build a house upon a piece of paper upon 
which a lease is drawn up, nor cultivate 
potatoes upon a freehold document made 



What the Socialist Said 79 

of parchment, neither can you, by 
merely signing and exchanging pieces of 
paper produce wealth, nor construct 
railroads, but you may wreck them some- 
times though. These papers and docu- 
ments are mere means of controlling 
capital but are not capital itself any more 
than the string which is used to hold the 
dog is the dog. 

"Let us consider some very plain and 
obvious manifestation of capital — say a 
railroad. Now, a railroad consists of 
many articles of use and a few of luxury, 
in the form of ties, rails, bridges, culverts, 
embankments, locomotives, cars, seats, 
cushions, etc., used to create more wealth 
in the form of fares charged to passen- 
gers, for freight dues charged for carrying 
goods. Let us take this form of capital — 
a railroad — and go into its economic 
analysis. How are the ties, rails and 
locomotives made? By the strength and 
skill of the worker, i.e., by useful design- 
ing labor applied to so much raw material 
in the same way as this platform was 



80 God's Children 

made from the tree. How were the 
bridges constructed, the embankment 
raised, the tunnels bored? By useful and 
intellectual labor exercised upon the land, 
and the result of all is the capital — the 
railroad. 

"Yet, strange to say, although the 
workers made it, the non-workers own it. 
How is this possible? Is a capitalist a 
huge octopus-like monster with his head 
thrust into the middle of the stock 
exchange shouting there, and with thou- 
sands of other heads and arms at the ends 
of long tentacles working, superintending 
and designing in thousands of different 
mines, factories, workshops, railroad sta- 
tions, offices and studies? If such a 
mighty monster took the products of 
the strength and skill of the many, I 
should certainly consider him entitled to 
them. 

"But the laborers not only make cap- 
ital, they use it or work with it and by it 
to make more wealth, not for themselves, 
who have made and produced the capital, 



What the Socialist Said Si 

but for idlers who have not made and 
who do not use but simply own and 
control both capital and laborers. 

"Even after the railroad, the cars, the 
locomotives, etc., are made, they do not 
bring in fares unless certain men — brakes- 
men, porters, conductors, engineers and 
laborers — work on and in them in order to 
produce wealth in the form of fares and 
freight dues, and even these could not 
work long were it not for the labor of track 
layers, section hands and laborers who 
continually keep cars and road in good 
repair. Now, did you ever see a capital- 
ist working in the manner above men- 
tioned? To return to the simile of the 
octopus. Is a capitalist a monster with 
one pair of eyes gazing upon an indecent 
dance at the Moulin Rouge in Paris and 
with myriads of other eyes watching his 
far-reaching railroad in all its length of 
miles and its hundreds of stations? Has 
he one pair of hands used by him to lift 
champagne glasses and dainty viands at 
some luxurious banquet and myriads of 



82 God' s Children 

other tentacle-like hands busy in thou- 
sands of other places collecting fares, put- 
ting on brakes, firing up engines or guiding 
by the lever the rate of their speed? If 
such an abnormal monster had been 
placed by nature above me and it took 
millions of dollars worth of value to my 
one, I should certainly be compelled to 
admit its right to them. But it not being 
so, it becomes manifestly unjust that one 
non-producer should take from the toil 
and ingenuity of many useful workers the 
result of their labor. 

"The points which I have been trying 
to make plain are these: That land is 
nature's free gift to humanity collectively, 
that the community is injured when a few 
monopolize land; therefore, for the good 
of the community at large, land should 
become the collective property of the 
people and should be nationalized. 

"That capital is made by labor, that 
capital is afterward worked by labor, 
therefore, capital should be owned by the 
laborers who make and use it. 



What the Socialist Said 83 

"That labor, being the fructifying force 
which is essential for the creation of 
wealth, should be employed by a national 
government and should not remain, as at 
present, dependent upon non-workers and 
monopolists for its employment. 

"That all wealth is produced by useful 
human labor applied to land or the 
products of the land, and that the pro- 
ducers should enjoy the full benefit of 
their products, and hence that all able- 
bodied adults should labor and should 
receive the full product of their labor. 

"Upon this method of reasoning the 
socialists base their demands, which are 
as follows: The nationalization of land 
and capital and the government employ- 
ment of all labor, said government to 
regulate, control and superintend labor, 
and manipulate the use of capital, and 
decide the distribution of all wealth. 
These demands may sound startling, rev- 
olutionary and desperate to those who 
hear them for the first time, but society 
is desperately diseased and desperate 



84 God 's Children 

diseases need desperate remedies. Con- 
sider the affluence and wealth of the 
plutocratic few; consider the penury and 
want of the industrious many; listen to the 
groans of the workless, homeless toilers, 
the sighs of down-trodden and defiled 
women; heed, oh, heed, ye fathers, the 
tears of the helpless little children and 
arise in the majesty of your numbers and 
assert your right to live as men should 
live. Rebel against the gradual death of 
capitalistic slavery. You have but to will 
it and you may be free, for you, the 
workers, are in the majority and the will 
of the majority is greater than all 
laws and institutions and is in fact the 
only valid government. Strive with 
strength, intelligence and energy to 
abolish these mighty evils which press 
you down. Strive by peaceable and con- 
stitutional means, by speaking, organ- 
izing, agitating and voting, but if these 
means are rendered of no avail by the 
wiles of capitalist possessors, then let 
them take the terrible alternative. Go 



What the Socialist Said 85 

to them with words of peace, persuasion 
and reasoning, but if these methods be of 
no avail forget not that sacred spirit of 
revolt which has so often in the past 
crushed despotism and dethroned oppres- 
sion. 

"Turn your faces toward the capitalists 
and address to them the words of the 
poet, William Morris: 

" 'Wish ye peace? Then be ye with us; let our 
hope be your desire. 
Will ye war? Then shall ye perish like the 
dry wood in the fire.' " 



CHAPTER VII 

A POLITICAL ECONOMIST HAS NO SOUL 

Hell is a city much like London — 
A populous and a smoky city. 
There are all sorts of people undone, 
And there is little or no fun done ; 
Small justice shown, and still less pity. 

There is great talk of Revolution — 
And a great chance of despotism ; 
Marching soldiers — camps— confusion 
Politics — meetings — rage — delusion 
Gin — suicide — and Methodism. 

And this is Hell — and in this smother 
Are all damnable and damned ; 
Each one damning, damns the other ; 
They are damned by one another, 
By none other are they damned. 

—Peter Bell the Third: P. B. Shelley. 

You have a sly equivocating vein that suits me not. 
— The Cenci: P. B. Shelley. 

. . The soul that he got from God he has bartered 
clean away ; 
We have threshed a stock of print and book, and win- 
nowed a chattering wind ; 
And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot 
find. 

86 



A Political Economist Has No Soul 8j 

We have handled him and dandled him, we have seared 

him to the bone ; 
And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul of 

his own. 

— To7nlinson: Rudyard Kipling. 

Upon the conclusion of his discourse 
the socialist descended the platform and 
Mercury approached him and remarked: 
"Young man, you have given me much 
valuable information. You have explained 
to me what was before incomprehensible; 
you have boldly uttered simple truths 
where others have told me willful or 
ignorant lies. I came from heaven to 
this earth which God has plentifully 
endowed with an ample sufficiency for 
the welfare of all his children, and yet I 
saw selfish luxury cheek by jowl with 
abject want. I saw palaces large enough 
to house twenty families occupied by but 
one at the West End; I saw structures, 
grand, massive and roomy in the city, yet 
they were completely empty, and here in 
these foul purlieus I see hovels barely 
large enough to accommodate two fami- 
lies overcrowded by twenty and thirty. 



88 God's Children 

Where there should be nothing but songs 
and sounds of peace and happiness I hear 
the blare of the trumpets of war and the 
sound of the marching tread of thousands 
of warriors about to slaughter at the 
bidding of their government thousands of 
their fellow men; I hear the sad plaints of 
little hungry children, the sighs of fallen 
and debauched women and the groans of 
despairing fathers and mothers, hopeless, 
soulless toilers. Some have blasphemed 
God's name saying that he wills things 
so; others have given other and trivial 
causes, but you alone by a few simple 
truths have made plain to me that the 
one great cause of all this is avarice, 
greed and monopoly, and that the one 
great cure is intelligence, equality and 
cooperation. Your socialism, I believe 
in as the only hope of God's Children; and 
I, as a messenger from heaven, give in the 
name of God his sanction to it and 
tender heaven's thanks to such as you 
who fearlessly dare to advocate such 
noble truths." 



A Political Economist Has No Soul 89 

The socialist speaker looked with an 
air of surprised amusement upon the 
aristocratic dandy who called himself a 
messenger from heaven and came to the 
conclusion that the heaven of his inter- 
locutor was Belgravia, his god, pleasure 
and that he had been worshiping that 
divinity in the form of a champagne 
bottle so earnestly that morning that he 
had drifted accidentally into Whitechapel, 
the terra incognita of his class, and was 
now speaking under some kindly emotion 
inspired by wine which had obliterated 
his class prejudices. With that polite 
urbanity which he had acquired from 
dealing with men and audiences the 
socialist replied: 

"You say you come from heaven, 
my friend, but I am afraid you will find 
your way back thither difficult. It is a 
long way from Whitechapel to heaven. 
You say that you agree with what we 
teach, but you say so in such an emotional 
manner that I fear your feelings speak 
and not your reason. We socialists place 



go God 's Children 

little confidence in such sudden conver- 
sions; the Salvation Army further down 
the street do that sort of thing. We do 
not wish to convert you; we would rather 
convince you. We do not appeal to sen- 
timent, but to sense. Weigh well what I 
have said, then hear what those who 
oppose as say, draw your own conclusion, 
and if convinced of the truth, become a 
socialist and work with us for the better- 
ment of the condition of mankind. Con- 
versions are the result of some passing 
emotion and are not lasting, but when a 
man's reason convinces him he must act 
up to the truth or live a lie." 

"Who are your opponents?" asked 
Mercury. 

"They are," replied the socialist, "the 
professors and teachers of political econ- 
omy." 

"What is political economy?" asked 
Mercury. 

"It is called the dismal science," replied 
the socialist. "It deals with commerce, 
shops, factories, trade, rent, interest and 



A Political Economist Has No Soul 91 

profit, and it teaches that the object God 
had in view when he put people on this 
earth was that they should produce 
wealth for a few idlers." 

"How singular," exclaimed Mercury. 
"Where could I find one of its expo- 
nents?" 

"Go and interview Ananias Average, 
Professor of Economics in Assford Uni- 
versity, who resides at 449 Westbourne 
Crescent, Regent's Park," replied the 
socialist. 

With an affectionate embrace and 
much gratitude Mercury took leave of 
the socialist. "It may be," mused the 
heavenly messenger, "that this socialist is 
wrong, nevertheless he is so anxious that 
I should study the matter for myself that 
I think he is not. The religious speaker 
blamed God for the misery of his chil- 
dren; he of course I knew to be wrong. 
The orator who condemned strong drink 
almost convinced me, but I found him to 
be mistaken when I heard the socialist 
speaker, and may not the socialist prove 



Q2 God 's Children 

to be incorrect when I hear from those 
who differ from him? I will see the 
political economist to-morrow/' 

Black night had spread itself over 
Whitechapel and the faint gleam of the 
street lamps and more gorgeous efful- 
gence of the brilliantly-lighted gin 
palaces served but to render the vices 
and shames of the metropolitan Inferno 
more repulsive and terrible. The little 
pallid-featured child, whose father she 
would tell you in her own little slangy 
patois was "on the booze," sat shivering 
upon the doorstep of a squalid home; the 
haggard-visaged mendicant beseeched in 
piteous tones from indifferent passers for 
that which society denied to him; the 
modern Magdalenes wearing their forced 
artificial smiles upon painted lips, but 
showing in the depths of their sunken 
eyes the unutterable woes of degraded 
womanhood, jostled, beseeched and 
enticed, and the thieves and pickpockets 
swaggered along, some seeking with 
keen-eyed alertness for prey, others 



A Political Economist Has No Soul 93 

revelling in flashy new clothes and tipsy 
hilarity over some successful coup. The 
heavenly messenger shrank from some, 
shuddered at others, but in the large- 
souled kindliness of his celestial compas- 
sion, wept in commiseration for all. 
Black midnight fell over all this wretch- 
edness. Chaste mother Nature veiled 
her pure eyes, the stars, with clouds, as 
though she would not contemplate such 
scenes. 

Mercury stopped before a large build- 
ing which was capped with a towering 
conically-shaped spire the point of which 
was concealed in the mist overhead. The 
high Gothic door was open and Mercury 
entered and stood in a richly-decorated 
building filled with seats, at the farther 
end of which was what looked like a table 
covered with a linen cloth upon which 
were candles, flowers and some massive 
golden ornaments. An oppressive and 
chilly solitude and stillness filled the vast 
place. Mercury started, for somebody 
touched him upon the shoulder, and asked 



94 God' s Children 

him what he was doing there. The 
heavenly messenger started and looked 
with that expression of disdain which 
even the most considerate cannot conceal 
when confronted with the coarse and 
vulgar. 

The features of the other were fat, 
coarse and pig-like, his brow ape-like and 
angular, his neck, broad and fat as that of 
a Yorkshire bull, was tightly encircled by 
a thin band of white starched linen and 
his capacious paunch was covered by a 
long tightly-buttoned frock-coat. 

Mercury replied, "I came in here out of 
curiosity because this house is so large 
and stately when compared with its sur- 
rounding hovels. What is this place?" 

"It is the house of God," replied the 
other. 

"It is truly singular that God should 
have an empty house while many of his 
children are homeless," rejoined Mercury. 

The fat minister, ignoring this last 
remark, went on to ask: "As you appear 
by clothing and manners to be a gentle- 



A Political Economist Has No Soul 95 

man, I presume you are a stranger in this 
locality and came hither, I suppose, 
slumming, that is, studying the condition 
of the poor." 

"Yes, I did," replied Mercury, with 
meaning emphasis. 

"Would you like to see our church? It 
is one of the most beautiful and costly in 
the city, even if it is in Whitechapel, and 
we have a very grand oil painting here 
which people often come miles to see." 
He then proceeded to draw attention to 
the many attractions of his church, point- 
ing them out where the vague half light 
allowed them to be seen. 

At length they stopped before a vivid 
and life-like oil painting representing 
Christ sitting in the garden on Mt. Olivet 
and weeping over the city of Jerusalem. 
It was a wonderful picture. The artist 
had conveyed into the face of the Christ- 
God an ineffable look of divine sadness. 

"Who was that beautiful sad-faced 
man?" asked Mercury. 

"That is God," replied the minister. 



g6 God's Children 

"Why does he weep?" 

"On account of the vices of his chil- 
dren," rejoined the parson. 

"He looks poor," remarked Mercury. 
"He is bare-footed and bare-headed; He 
need not have gone so. A god should 
be great and strong." 

"Yes, he was strong in his humility, 
great in his suffering and poverty," 
replied the minister, "for," he added, 
unctiously turning up his eyes and joining 
his hands together over his fat paunch, 
"he knew not where to lay his head." 

Just then a sound of somebody moving 
and heaving a deep sigh attracted the 
attention of the parson to a bench in a 
dark corner of the church. Quickly he 
rushed in the direction of the sounds and 
perceived a wretched outcast sleeping on 
the bench. 

"What are you doing there, you 
dirty vagabond?" angrily demanded the 
parson. 

"I found the door open and came in 
to rest," timidly replied the pallid-faced 



A Political Economist Has No Soul 97 

outcast, "for I am homeless and have no 
place to lay my head." 

As he uttered these words a look of 
suffering, so strangely similar to that on 
the face of the picture overspread his 
countenance that Mercury was struck by 
the coincidence of the words and the look. 

The parson, too brutal to notice either, 
loudly exclaimed: "Get out you filthy 
blackguard," and, seizing the unfortunate 
by the collar, began to push him rudely 
toward the door. 

Mercury looked on in profound disgust. 

"What lying hypocrisy," he cried, "to 
build palaces for a God who knew not 
where to lay his head and who never 
now sleeps in them, and to hurl out like a 
mangy dog one of God's Children who 
stands in need of that which their God 
sought in vain when he was on earth." 

With a bound he reached the fat 
parson just as the latter was about to 
push the outcast down the steps; Mer- 
cury fixed his strong white fingers in the 
flabby throat of the hypocrite and dashed 



g8 God's Children 

him through the doorway to the pave- 
ment. 

The parson immediately began to 
wield the weapon of priests and women — 
his tongue: 

"Police! Police! Murder!" he cried, 
and when a policeman appeared, Mer- 
cury not being in sight, the minister 
vented his wrath by having the homeless 
outcast arrested. 

Down the street they went, the fat, 
excited parson, a crowd of night owls 
attracted by his cries, and a tall strong 
policeman at the head, dragging along a 
ragged, pallid-faced, sad-eyed workman 
whose head was bowed in shame and fear 
upon his breast. 

In the silent solitude of the rich church, 
where none could see, the beautiful 
Christ-God shed real tears. He was 
weeping for the vices of modern Jeru- 
salem. 

Next morning, Mercury, anxious to 
discover the truth and to find out whether 
there could be any reason why so much 



A Political Economist Has No Soul 99 

suffering should prevail among men, 
went to see the political economist. 

Upon reaching the comfortable resi- 
dence of the professor, which was situated 
in Westbourne Crescent, Regent's Park, 
Mercury was met at the door by a servant 
who demanded his business. Mercury 
tendered his card which was carried up to 
the study. 

The professor read with a puzzled look 
the name "Mercury Deomissit," inscribed 
upon the card. 

"Hum," he remarked, "looks classical. 
Probably one of those German professors 
who still cling to the mediaeval custom of 
Latinizing their names. Show him up." 

Mercury entered, and saluting the pro- 
fessor of the dismal science, remarked: 

"Sir, I have been referred to you as 
one of the greatest professors of political 
economy and would like, if you have time 
and convenience, to consult you concern- 
ing that science and the precepts it lays 
down as governing modern society. I 
have traveled a great distance to investi- 



ioo God 's Children 

gate the condition of men here and was 
sent only yesterday to you by a socialist 
who proposed a very revolutionary, but 
apparently very necessary remedy, for 
the terrible want and suffering which at 
present afflicts the majority of the people." 

"A socialist," exclaimed the professor, 
looking in surprise upon his aristocratic- 
looking visitor. "You have been pursu- 
ing your inquiries in a strange and 
unreliable quarter. Those socialists are 
ignorant and discontented men who 
assemble in the market-place and who, in 
their illogical denunciations of the right- 
ful possessors of wealth, are guided 
merely by malice and envy." 

"Envy," rejoined Mercury, "is unlawful 
when entertained for that which is not 
rightfully ours, yet it seems to me that 
those working people are entitled by all 
the canons of justice to the wealth which 
their labor creates. What you term 
illogical denunciation appeared to me to 
be a very logical demand, for the socialist 
proved that wealth and capital are both 



A Political Economist Has No Soul 101 

produced by the labor of the working 
class, and land I know to be God's free 
gift to all his children. You speak of 
rightful possessors. What right, may I 
ask of you, have the rich to that which 
they own?" 

"Well," replied the professor, "as far as 
the land is concerned, the right of the 
present owners consists in the fact that 
they and their ancestors have held it, 
some of them, from the time when Wil- 
liam of Normandy came and conquered 
this country in 1066, and such a lengthy 
occupation certainly confers a right." 

"But if the followers of the conqueror 
stole the land nine centuries ago, that 
does not entitle the present holders to it. 
The length of time stolen property is 
kept does not lessen but rather aggravates 
the heinousness of the theft; particularly 
is this so in the case of land, the monop- 
oly of which operates so much to the 
detriment of the mass of the people. 
What are their claims to the possession 
of capital?" 



102 God's Children 

"By dint of thrift and economy the 
present holders who have acquired are 
certainly entitled to their property," 
replied Ananias Average. 

"Thrift and economy are terms almost 
synonymous with saving," replied Mer- 
cury, "and I fail to see how by saving a 
thing you can increase its quantity; and 
furthermore, if that socialist spoke truly 
about these wealthy ones called capital- 
ists, they must be more noted for extrav- 
agance and luxury than for the qualities 
which you specify as distinguishing them 
and entitling them to what they hold." 

"Capital is certainly entitled to some 
return," tartly remarked the economist. 

"Capital, though," answered the visitor, 
"is not the capitalist; the former is a 
means of production, the latter the man 
who controls it, and can a controller 
claim a greater right than a maker?" 

"Is not profit the wages of superintend- 
ence, and interest the reward of risk?" 
questioned the professor. 

"To say that risk should be rewarded is 



A Political Economist Has No Soul 103 

to encourage gambling and taking risks 
with wealth that is created does not 
create more wealth in the aggregate," 
replied Mercury. "As to the wages of 
superintendence," he continued, "they 
who usually really superintend are fore- 
men and overseers, and their reward is 
wages truly, but the capitalist does not 
and cannot superintend the vast concerns 
which he owns filled with those huge 
complicated tools called machines and in 
which the operators are too manifold, 
numerous and stupendous to be superin- 
tended by one man. It is simply impos- 
sible under such conditions for one man 
to superintend or regulate, and when you 
base their demand for their dispropor- 
tionately large incomes upon the fulfil- 
ment of an unachievable task you make 
it plain that your premises are too ridicu- 
lous to support your conclusion." 

"Sir!" angrily retorted the economist, 
"if you consider my opinion ridiculous I 
think your presence undesirable. Leave 
my office immediately!" 



104 God 's Children 

Mercury turned pale with contempt 
and wrath. "Leave! yes, but you shall 
leave with me. I have seen suffering and 
vice among the ignorant, and here I see 
lying and deceit where truth should be 
found. I met in Whitechapel the prosti- 
tutes of their bodies; here I meet a man 
of intelligence who prostitutes that which 
is more sacred, his reason." 

The professor sprang from his seat with 
a threatening gesture, but Mercury, power- 
ful in his superhuman strength, towered 
above him, and seizing him by the throat, 
threw him out of the window. With a 
loud shriek the professor fell three stories 
to the pavement and ere he expired 
found sufficient time to inform a police- 
man that he had been thrown from his 
office by a dangerous and violent revolu- 
tionist. The officer dashed upstairs, but 
he found the office empty. 

Mercury had disappeared. In disgust 
he had left the earth. He could laugh at 
the conceit of the aristocrat and the 
ridiculous credulity of the religious 



A Political Economist Has No Soul 105 

fanatic; he could sympathize with the 
wretchedness of the poor and even 
sorrow for the vices of the dissolute; but 
he could not tolerate the lies and hypoc- 
risy of political economy. The dismal 
science was too much even for his 
celestial patience. Upon leaving the 
earth and assuming again his spirit, Mer- 
cury soared upward but he did not go 
far. His spirit hovered in vindictive and 
terrible rage above the earth. He was 
waiting for the soul of that political 
economist. But he waited long and in 
vain and eventually relinquished his 
expectation of vengeance with regret. 
He had discovered what all discrimin- 
ating children of earth know — that a 
political economist has no soul. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE WRATH OF GOD 

Dies irae, dies ilia, 
Solvet saeclum in favilla ; 
Teste David cum Sibilla. 

— Dies Irae- Old Catholic Hymn 

Mercury hurriedly entered the heav- 
enly domain in such deep dejection that 
many of its denizens turned to look upon 
him with surprise. His face usually so 
calm and joyous, bore a sad and pained 
expression, and his brow was marked with 
anguish and suffering. God looked with 
genial amusement upon the downcast 
mien of his volatile messenger and 
inquired in astonishment: 

"Why, Mercury, it appears that your 
experiences have not pleased you." 

Mercury, with a sigh, replied: 

"Ah, God, your poor children down on 
that earth are in a most degraded condi- 
tion. There is want, misery and suffering 
1 06 



The Wrath of God 107 

among them; they are debauched and 
unclean; they war and kill and slaughter." 

''Mercury," replied God, in a gentle 
tone of reproof, "I fear you are mistaken. 
Has your contact with those lower beings 
caused you to forget that I am God and 
that God does not make mistakes? 
When I made that planet I placed an 
ample sufficiency upon it to support the 
needs of all my children. Why then 
should there be want and misery there? 
For every male I produced a female. 
Why then should there be vice and 
uncleanness? I gave to my children the 
gift of reason by means of which they 
might discriminate, arrange and settle 
peacefully their affairs. Why then should 
they war like the lower brutes?" 

"You may have made well, but you 
have neglected them since, and among 
them there has arisen an avaricious and 
ambitious few who have appropriated all 
the wealth, beauty and power, leaving to 
the many nothing but want, hideousness 
and servitude," replied Mercury. 



108 God's Children 

"That is strange," replied God, begin- 
ning to be interested. "Pray, Mercury, 
give me your experiences in detail.' , 

God carelessly reclined upon a couch 
of opalescent-colored clouds and listened 
intently while his messenger related what 
he had seen and heard. 

In the beginning of the recital God was 
much amused. He laughed aloud when 
Mercury told him what the theologian 
said, but as the story progressed he 
became first serious, then sad and at 
length angry. 

The Great Ruler of the Universe is 
seldom angry and does not become so 
from trivial causes, but when he does his 
wrath is terrible to behold. 

A heavy ominous silence reigned 
throughout his golden realm and his 
happy and smiling companions hurried 
from his presence and hid their faces. 
He turned to Mercury, who stood shud- 
dering in the presence of the Almighty 
ire, and said: 

"Leave me, messenger, I will myself 



The Wrath of God 109 

look and listen whether what you tell me 
of is true." 

God leaned his head upon his hand 
and turned his eyes in the direction of 
the earth. By a slight effort, his almighty 
mind sweeping through intervening space, 
he contemplated the condition of his 
children. 

God looked and he saw dainty ladies 
with pink-white faces and sensual lips 
sipping rich wines and casting sensual 
looks upon the richly-dressed men who 
drank and sang and smiled with them. 
He saw stern, hard-faced plutocrats 
frowning from club windows upon the 
passing multitude; he saw luxury; he 
saw pride; he saw war; he saw lust, 
blood, ambition and arrogance. 

God looked and he saw the pallid wife 
of the workless laborer putting a cup of 
cold water to the lips of her starving 
child; he saw her squalid hovel and her 
want-pinched face; he saw her despair- 
ing husband struggling with thousands of 
others as sallow-faced as himself at the 



no God's Children 

dock-yard gates for the work which 
would provide bread for his wife and 
little ones, and God saw him turn away 
workless and desperate. 

God looked and he was angry. 

God listened and he heard soft sensu- 
ous songs of pleasure; he heard laughter, 
light but heartless; he heard sneers and 
contempt expressed for the poor and 
lowly, and hatred uttered in bitter words 
by the wealth-insolvent few for the 
suffering and toiling many. 

God listened. He heard the deafening 
roar and whirr of the mighty machinery 
in thousands of factories, but rising loudly 
and plainly above it the cries and groans 
of the little child-slaves who tended the 
machines. He heard the unuttered 
prayer of woe from the soul of the fallen 
woman compelled to sell herself in order 
to exist; he heard the desperate blasphe- 
mous De Profundis hurled at heaven by 
the hopeless, starving wage-slave and he 
heard it in magnanimous forgiveness, for 
he is a merciful God. 



The Wrath of God 1 1 1 

God listened and was angry. 

His broad, smooth, placid brow became 
furrowed with a terrible minatory frown. 
He arose, and his lofty stature, thousands 
of cubits high, threw a lengthy shadow 
athwart the bright and peaceful scene of 
heavenly beauty. His eyes, so soft and 
smiling, flashed like two blazing beacons; 
his mouth, usually wreathed in indulgent 
and careless smiles, curved down at the 
corners as does that of the monarch of 
the desert when, hungry, he seeks his prey 
in the Lybian wilderness, and his long 
flowing locks, which, falling about his 
brow and shoulders form a golden frame 
for his beautiful face arose and curled 
around his head like the serpent curls 
of ancient Medusa. Threateningly he 
reached forth an arm, mighty as that of a 
giant, graceful as that of a Grecian 
athlete, toward the earth and thus he 
spoke in his wrath: 

"Oh, my children, misguided, sinful, 
wretched and sad. Oh, my children, 
avaricious, arrogant and selfish. Unto 



ii2 God's Children 

you I gave plenty and of it you have 
produced poverty; unto you I gave purity 
and peace and you have made impurity 
and war; unto you I gave reason and you 
have abused it so that you live in a worse 
way than the beasts to whom I gave it 
not. 

"But I am God and I shall so will it in 
the near future that those among you 
who live in idleness and work not, shall 
not live upon the blood and sweat of the 
many who toil. For I will encourage 
with my omnipotent will the spread of 
that creed of hope for my children called 
'socialism' and the desperate many shall 
arise against the despoiling few; they 
shall hurl the mighty from their high., 
places; they shall despoil the despoilers 
and take unto themselves the just reward 
of their labor — the wealth of the earth. 

"And then when in the place of want 
and misery there shall be peace and 
plenty; when in the place of sighs of 
slaves and cries of starving children there 
shall be laughter, song and joy and peace; 



The Wrath of God 113 

when equality shall succeed despotism 
and justice supplant partial and venal 
law; when men shall work each for all, 
and all for each, then will you not blas- 
pheme my name when you call yourselves 
God's Children. 



the END 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




